In Canada? Waiting in line? Already got your Pre? Giddy as a schoolgirl? Feeling the sting of a brand new 3 year contract? Is that contract offsetting the joy of not having to hassle with a mail-in rebate? We really, really want to know because we're happy for our Canadian readers (we just wish more of them could feasibly use Bell).

Hit us up in the comments, email your photos into news@precentral.net, let us know what you think!

If you're still on the fence about the Pre, be sure to hit up our insanely comprehensive full Palm Pre Review and Guide. Toronto's Globe and Mail (thanks tipster who for some reason wanted to be Anonymous) has an article up on the launch and why it's good for Bell as a network:

“There's no doubt the Pre will have a positive impact on our market share and there's no doubt the Pre will have a positive impact on ARPU [average revenue per user] because it's so easy to use, so our data revenue will grow,” said Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Mobility and chief brand officer of Bell Canada.

Don't you wish you lived in a world where you didn't know what APRU meant? Also, and we say this gently, why do you think Palm decided to start their Pre launch with two smaller (some might say struggling) networks?

47 Comments

Posted by Anonymous on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 9:26 am EDT

Im so confused. I was at my Bell store the other day and they told me that all Pre-Orders were being shipped today, but stores couldn't start selling them until Friday, even tho they have had them since last week!?

I hope they learn from our experience, don't buy a PRE until you check out the nearly 200 things it won't do that almost any other phone does right out of the box, the same nearly 200 things that Palm and Sprint won't acknowledge and can't say if they are even "working on it". Then, just don't buy a Pre. Im past my 30 day return, so here goes 2 years of being reminded daily that my full price phone barely functions and how Sprint didn't care at all to even discuss a remedy.

Wow someone sounds a littly whiny, just wondering what it is all your phone can't do? Mine is leaps and bounds better than my old phone, missing the fine polish and a couple features but nothing too bad. And when Iphone and HTC first released their stuff it was missing a ton of stuff as well. Palm has a great platform to build on, hoping they just don't mess that up. For speed they should be able to get this thing easily 2x-5x faster than what it is now with improved js engine and more tweaks on the low level side.

I PRE ORDERED mine a couple weeks back, can't wait to get the Bell store. Also, Bell's network isn't struggling it has the best 3G network in Canada, that covers 98% of our population. As for the 3 year terms, unless your on fido than thats normal on any carrier up here.

I pre-ordered mine from bestbuy mobile (first on there list), I called yesterday and they said they have it but cant give it to me until the 27th. Now I have to wait until im done work then drive in an hourin bumper to bumper traffic before I can pick mine up.

BTW, I am not the earliest to get the pre.
The stuff in Bell informed me that they just received some new coupons for palm pre. The three guys before me didn't get the chance to take it. It is a 50 bucks coupon. I used it to buy the touchstone, which sells at 80 bucks.

So, if you don't get the coupon, phone the bell store and ask for it!!

Walked into the Bell store 5 minutes after they opened this morning. Walked out 30 minutes later with my new Pre. I was amazed the number transfer was instant. It only took so long because I had lots of questions about Bell service. I'm the sort of customer Bell was hoping for: someone who switched to their service just for this phone. Hell, I even broke my contract with Fido with 6 months left.

Too bad they didn't have the Touchstone in yet. Too bad the Precentral.net store charges an outrageous $30 for UPS shipping to Canada (plus the inevitable UPS brokerage fees), else I'd buy it from them.

I got my pre on tuesday cause my local bell store just got them in and I was the only one on the waiting list they sold it to me early...

Bell has service in sask but its only 1x anywhere outside regina.. I'm in BC and I had to switch from rogers to Bell because rogers service is horrible anywhere outside the lower mainland, bell has 3g in places rogers has no service at all and where iam rogers still runs on edge which has a nasty habit of dropping to GPRS all the time...

"Also, and we say this gently, why do you think Palm decided to start their Pre launch with two smaller (some might say struggling) networks?"

Because its still beta and we just happen to be the Beta testers! I don't mind though.

I think by year end when they launch on all the popular networks its going to be a very polished product and webos will probably start making its way into other phones and dare I even think of other vendors challenging android.

Oh man.. I'm so going to play with one but it'll be a cold day in hell before I sign up with Bell. And you have to love their motives - "it'll drive up data rates and make us rich because we already charge wayyyy too much for that anyways". Bell should have been broken up a long time ago.

Smaller struggling networks? How so in Bells case? They have the same user base as Rogers and the coverage for 3G is double that of Rogers, so I don't understand. By the end of the year they are also rolling out their HSPA network, which cost them over 1 billion dollards. I don't know how you can call that struggling.